A variety of projects require search, analysis and comparison of document content. For example, in the field of patent analysis, work may involve analysis of content from one or more subject patents, analysis of extrinsic documents to patents, such as file histories or dictionaries, and work may revolve around finding and analyzing reference content and evaluating claims in the one or more subject patents against the reference content and against the extrinsic texts.
A patent prior art search may first involve manual selection of terms from the claims or specification of a subject patent, from the file history of a patent, or terms known to be similar in meaning, typically selected from a thesaurus or dictionary. After the terms are selected, and logical connectors or relationships formulated, the terms are often used to query for relevant reference content via keyword query searching. Additionally, in the case of patent searches, searchers may design filters to restrict results to references associated with certain classifications, potentially using UPC or IPC classifications associated with the subject patent. Other fields of information may be employed to find reference content, such as inventor names, or references cited directly or indirectly by the subject patent.
In the field of patent prior art searching, the task may be all the more complicated by the fact that multiple references may be combined in order to form a rejection of a subject patent. For example, if a first reference document contains support for one part of a claim, and a second reference document contains support for a second part of a claim, then the reference content might be combined, especially if there is a reason or motivation for the combination of reference documents. Interestingly, the prior art search may involve not only the search for the reference documents that anticipate a claim, but may also require special analysis and consideration as to why the combination of references can be grouped together.
After relevant reference content has been found from a prior art search, questions arise as to whether claims from a subject patent document read on reference content, especially given claim interpretation. Claims may be interpreted based on language used in claims, language used in the specification associated with the claims, language used in the file history of the subject patent, and potentially, language used in extrinsic sources, such as dictionaries. When preparing office action responses, patent examiners may wish to include claim charts that include the claim text, a construction of claims from language in the claims, specification, file history and/or extrinsic sources, and the text of relevant references. Yet preparation of claim charts that match claim strings to portions of content from one or more references, particularly claim charts including supporting text from a file history or extrinsic sources, may be time consuming and require significant work. This task of producing claim charts is particularly burdensome if a subject patent document contains hundreds of claims, and each claim contains many claim strings, and if the file history runs for some length. Even more daunting may be selecting text from the prosecution history of siblings within a patent family (e.g. divisionals, continuations, continuation-in-parts.)
It is notable that the processes and types of information that are useful in prior art searching may be useful for other processes within patent analysis, or for other business applications entirely. For example, still within the field of patent analysis, comparison of patent claims, accompanied by text extracted from the supporting specification and patent file history, and accompanied with text from reference content may be performed when one or more patents of a portfolio are compared against product documentation, in order to determine product infringement.
As another example, the analysis and systems described herein may be used to analyze other legal instruments, such as contracts. In particular, association and analysis of terms of contracts with extrinsic (parole) evidence is of particular interest.
As another example, in a different business field, such as generic web search engines, determination of groups of references, that when combined are applicable to a user query, may be useful for general query processing.
Like reference numerals are used to designate like parts in the accompanying drawings.